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Wizard101 hits 10 million player milestone
Wizard101, the kid- and family-friendly fantasy MMORPG from KingsIsle Entertainment, has hit a huge milestone as it has seen its 10 millionth registered player. To show its gratitude, KingsIsle is giving every Wizard a complementary "Party Pack" to help begin the celebration.
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Comments
These kind of comments are just ignorant. Players or accounts? Who cares? It's a huge milestone, regardless. Also, whether you believe it or not, Wizard101 is wildly successful. Considering:
Their charity credit shop mount generated 126k in a single month (December) and that's only one item
It's the most popular game in my son's elementary school and my daughter's middle school
My son begs me for a Wizard101 card everytime we go to Walmart, Rite Aid, 7-11, etc..
The kid next door actually begs to do chores so he can buy Wizard101 cards
I'd say they're doing very well.
~Ripper
100Mill is hard to achieve, so pretty good.
But thats...
100Mill in their pocket if you think about it..
And if you actually play the game like i do (i am 17)
you will see that KI is taking money left and right from kids..
"Buy Membership and get everything Unlocked!"
oh but you want a mount?
maybe some cool gear?
Looks like you need more "Crowns"
and their servers are horrible!
10mill players, and the servers are laggy as hell?
With that EASY 100mill, they can up the bandwith on their servers.
come on now...
its like Playing WOW, with laggy non dedicated servers, with Membership AND a item mall.
Only reason why they are doing good, is because of the kids..
Little rant..
...
It's not laggy, at least not globally - we play on a 1.5 MB DSL Connection over wi-fi with two different accounts and machines with different specs -generally no problems. Can there be lag spikes during insane peak times? Sure, but you can also switch realms if the server you're on is full.
Doing good because of the kids? It' a kids game, so that's where they should make their money. On top of that, your complaints about the item shop are unfounded - there's nothing in there you HAVE to buy in order to play the game. That's the mark of a good item shop - make things people WANT to buy, but don't have to. In general, their revenue model is pretty darn good - a sub costs less than other full featured MMOs, they have a family plan discount and even a really low yearly rate in addition to being able to unlock zones a la carte with crowns and being able to buy items with crowns. it gives the consumers freedom to budget and spend their money as they see fit. I pay for my son's subscription, but I only buy him crowns on rare occasions, like his birhtday or Christams. This hasn't stopped him from enjoying the game...
~Ripper
In fact its F2P but not Free to enjoy. Like all so called F2P
As you told before they go through your kids to get your money.
Maybe you should just invest your time for your kids?
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I'm not commenting on the success of Wizard 101, but stating how many registered players is rather meaningless. It doesn't really say how many people are actually playing the game, let alone how many are actually playing.
For all we know 9,975,000 players may have left or never played that game past the first 10 minutes.
It is impressive to see so many people trying these games, but see millions of people try these games and the small amount of actual game servers to house players suggests the retention rates are very small.
Still it looks like a good market for kids games.
Xianthos - it's not a F2P at all. It never has been, nor has KingsIsle ever stated it was. While it's free to download and try, it's a p2p game beyond the free trial area.
~Ripper
Actually, the very first splash screen on the homepage is "SIGN UP ... PLAY FOR FREE"
The very first thing shown when a user starts a new account is "PLAY FOR FREE!"
Very deceptive marketing.
Cool.
It says player milestone. Does that mean each time I create a character I count as a new player? Or is this accounts? Active accounts, paying accounts, or total accounts ever?
I will concede that may be confusing. It might be better if it said "TRY FOR FREE". Yes, you can play for free forever, but you only get access to the free trial content. Wizard101 is a P2P Game and they don't hide this fact.
One of their other screens is this:
Also, on their home page is a link called "Parents" that takes you to this page, which explicitly states the prices, suggest parents play themselves so the can see what their children are getting into, reinforces the concepts of balance and rewards (being allowed to play for doing homework and chores, for example) and discusses internet safety. It's a parent's responsibility to know and understand what his/her child downloads, installs and does online and explain things to that child. KingsIsle breaks it down pretty good for parents, as evidenced above. If there's any confusion, it's because of parents that don't care or pay attention to what their kids are doing.
Confusing? Maybe. Deceptive? No.
~Ripper